Portable Image Storage & Viewing Devices

This material is excerpted from the forthcoming book Displaying & Sharing your Digital Photographs. If you would like to be notified when the book is published click the link below to send me an e-mail: E-mail me when the Displaying & Sharing book is published To see the book's tentative table of contents, click the link below: Show me the table of contents for the Displaying and Sharing book

Portable digital image storage and viewing devices are advancing rapidly and that’s good because they meet a real need. When out photographing, if your storage device becomes filled with images, you need a place to temporarily store the images until you can transfer them to your main system. One device used for this task is the notebook computer. Not only do many people already have one of these, but their large screens and ability to run any software lets you have a mobile version that duplicates your permanent setup. However, a notebook computer isn’t always the ideal temporary device because of its weight, short battery life, and long start-up time. Hence the introduction of the portable hard drive or CD burners.

FlashTrax from SmartDisk is one of the new multimedia storage/viewer devices. ().

To use one of these devices you insert your memory card into a slot, often using an adapter, and transfer your images. You can then erase your camera’s storage device to make room for new images and resume shooting. When you get back to your permanent setup, you copy or move the images from the intermediate storage device to the system you use for editing, printing, and distributing them. The speed with which you can make this transfer depends on the connections supported by the device. Most support USB 2 and some support FireWire. If the device burns CDs, you can read them in your system’s CD drive just like any other CD.

The latest trend is to incorporate image storage into multipurpose devices. Many of these devices let you view your stored images on the device itself or on a connected TV—and even pan, rotate, and zoom the images. Some also let you print directly to a printer without using a computer. The trend is to go even farther and combine digital photos, digital videos, and MP3 music in the same device. With a device such as this you’ll be able to create slide shows with special transitions, pans, and accompanying music and play them back anywhere.

One way to eliminate or reduce the need for intermediate storage is to use a higher-capacity storage device in the camera. For example, some devices now store many gigabytes of data, enough to store hundreds of large photos.

The key questions to ask when considering an intermediate storage devices are:

What is its storage capacity? What is the cost per megabyte of storage?

Does it have slots or adapters for the storage devices you use?

Does it support the image formats you use? Many devices support common formats just as JPEG, but not proprietary formats such as Canon’s RAW and Nikon’s NEF format.

Does it support video and MP3 music playback? Does it support your camera’s movie format if it has one?

What is the transfer rate and how long does it take to transfer images from a card to the device or burn a CD?

Can it display images on a TV set or be connected directly to a printer?

If it connects to a TV does it have a remote control?

Can you view stored images on the device’s own screen?

Are there ways to rotate, zoom in/out and scroll?